Inside the dining room in a neighborhood of neat, newer homes, Otha Crowder studied the team picture taken 67 years earlier, moving from face-to-face, adding a brief footnote to each name.

These were his guys, Joey DiGiacomo, Nuccie Sacco and all the rest. He was also one of theirs. If you grew up in the 1940s in Hammonton – then a small, Italian-American dominated farming hamlet on the White Horse Pike midway between Philadelphia and Atlantic City – that still means something, even all these years later.

“I couldn’t find a better place to live, to be born and raised than Hammonton. I really mean that,” Crowder said.

That sounds about right. Given the circumstances, there should have been more places like it.

Crowder, who everyone still calls “Art,” has seen plenty during the years. He was an African-American soldier stationed in South Carolina in the 1950s, and later a cop in Camden during that city’s racially charged riots in 1969 and 1971, eventually rising to the rank of detective.

It was the lessons of inclusion he learned in his hometown, particularly on a diamond constructed near Hammonton Lake by the Albert Mulliner – the founding father of the state’s first Little League – that helped see him through it all.

Back then Crowder was just a child playing ball with his buddies, oblivious to the fact that they were making history on multiple fronts.

The pertinent details – passed from generation-to-generation – are that Hammonton was set to travel to Williamsport, Pennysylvania, for the first Little League World Series, then called the National Little League Tournament, in 1947 when tournament officials informed them they couldn’t bring Crowder because he was black.

Mulliner, several months removed from Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier in Major League Baseball, dug his heels in and replied that either their entire team was coming, or none of them were coming. Little League relented, and Hammonton’s All-Stars boarded a bus and made the trip they would take for three straight years, winning the championship in 1949, when Crowder was 12.

Gabriel Donio – founder and publisher of the Hammonton Gazette – interviewed Mulliner, who died in 2001, about it, and references it in a book he wrote about the town. Jimmy Rodio, an 84-year-old who became close friends with Mulliner during the years and owned the local radio station known as WNJH, confirmed it.

“(Mulliner) said ‘what kind of lesson would I be teaching these boys if we didn’t do this?’ ” Rodio said.

Years later, Crowder recalls his conversation with Louise Ricci, whose husband Barney was one of the team’s coaches.

“She said they weren’t going to tell me anything about it. I was too young,” Crowder said. “Then she said to me ‘that’s exactly what they tried to pull. And basically, we told them that if you don’t play, we don’t play.’ ”

It’s as powerful an example as you’ll find about how teaching life lessons is more important in youth sports than any instruction in fundamentals. The symmetry with Robinson stepping onto their field with the Brooklyn Dodgers earlier that year is undeniable.

The three years Crowder traveled to Williamsport were a magical time in his life, with the celebration after their championship in 1949 something that remains a vivid memory to this day. He does not, however, remember seeing other black players in the tournaments.

Idyllic as a childhood in Hammonton may have been, real life would eventually intervene, as Crowder enlisted in the Navy after high school and found himself in Charleston, South Carolina.

“I saw racism for the first time when I was in the Navy,” he said.

“There were a lot of racists. They would try to push on the black guys from the south, and I would say ‘you’d better back off or you’ll have to deal with me.’ That’s where I first saw it.

“Back in those days, if you were hitchhiking there were a lot of places you couldn’t go in, or you had to go in the back. And I was like, ‘I’m not going in the back.’ You realized it was a different world the older you got. But you didn’t realize any of that when you were growing up. You were just a kid playing ball.”

Sifting through a well-worn newspaper and other memorabilia spread out across the table recently, the memories came flooding back to Crowder, with the reality that few in the black-and-white photos were still alive tempering the enthusiasm.

But there was no tempering the elation after their 5-0 victory over the team from Pensacola, Florida, in the 1949 championship game, with the entire town turning out to greet them on their return, with a parade scheduled for the following night.

“We were a very close-knit community,” Crowder said. “We were one of the few black families, but my grandpa was there when it was horse and wagon. So we were around a long time. My dad worked on a farm in town.

“Winning the championship was an incredible experience for a 12-year-old. We didn’t think about much else.”

To them, the only thing that mattered was what happened on the field. No one wanted to miss a practice. Ever.

Speaking of the field, it’s the same one they use today. Except now it’s named in honor of Albert Mulliner, who was the first entry on the Wall of Fame they erected after his death 13 years ago.

As for the historical significance of the place, both within the state and nationally, it stands as nothing short of a shrine to athletics and ideals, and the impact they can have on young lives.

The Joe Graziano New Jersey State Little League Championships and the New Jersey State Junior League Championships will take place at the Berkeley Little League complex in Bayville from July 23-28. For more details and other little league stories, photo galleries and more go to littleleague.app.com.